Sea Level Changes
Present the Issue? Sea level change has been happening for hundreds of thousands of years but it’s been such a slow change that no one has paid much attention to it. The reason we are starting to notice it is because over the last one hundred years. The changes have accelerated by about three times as opposed to about two hundred years ago. Why is it Controversial? It is a controversial problem because if the sea level rises up too much farther then many people will have to migrate away from their homes and force them to move further inland. It will also shrink the land that is available for people to live on so many cities will overpopulate too quickly forcing people to live on the streets. Making jobs harder to find and raising criminal activity because people need money but have no way to get it besides taking it from others. What do Scientists Say? The scientists say that the only way to prevent the rising sea level is to stop global warming. What’s happening is the polar ice caps are melting. when that happens water is being added to the ocean bringing the water higher and higher. What do the Opponents Say? The opponents say that everything is normal and nothing has changed since 100 years ago. Polar bears aren’t dying and we are not losing any land mass. They even say that we are better off now then we were 100 years ago. What is the Support or Evidence? All of the experiments that have been done say that the sea level is rising and it is because of the ice caps melting. It is almost common sense if you think about it. The ice caps melt putting more water into the ocean. In turn the sea level rises. There was much talk about a satellite picture showing that the ice caps are not actually shrinking but that they are growing. There has been much talk about the picture being false because there is no scientific evidence that backs it up. Are the Experiments/Claims Reproducible? All the experiments can be reproduced but the outcomes may be a little bit different from what they were before. The pictures could be reproduced. The only real significance they could be for is comparing now and however long ago.All of the evidence is in the experiments on the polar ice caps. The experiments that have been done on the tides and the ice caps show that the sea is raising about 1.8 mm each year. As long as the ice keeps melting the sea will keep coming up. Draw Your Own Conclusion If the sea keeps coming up then towns like ours will be flooded permanently and we will have to move out like many other coastal towns. The only way to stop it is to slow down car emissions, coal power plants, the dairy industry and other industries that destroy our atmosphere Hypothesis/Experiment If I did an experiment I would get a box with a window on the side. Make a beach on the side of the box. Fill the box with water. Then, I would put lots of ice cubes into the water symbolizing the ice caps. I would draw a line of where the line where the water was before the ice cubes melted. Then I would draw a line where the water was after the ice cubes melted. The hypothesis is that the ice will keep melting until it is all gone and the water will keep rising up.